Often motivated by a desire to maintain the existing status quo, sloth almost cost the U.S. its auto industry, as it refused for decades to build fuel-efficient cars to compete with Japanese, Korean and European imports.
The auto industry must acknowledge that a rational transportation policy should seek a balance between individual convenience, the efficient use of limited resources, and urban-living values that protect spaciousness, natural beauty, and human-scale mobility.
A number of us had conversations with the Kerry campaign about what he was going to say about CAFE. What he told us was that he did not want to sacrifice jobs and that he wanted to work with the auto industry to achieve that goal.
President Obama made the right choice, over one million Americans are still working today. The American auto industry is not just surviving. It is thriving. Where Mitt Romney was willing to turn his back on Akron, Dayton and Toledo, Ohio, the president said, 'I've got your back.'
I liken myself to Henry Ford and the auto industry, I give you 90 percent of what most people need.
In the auto industry, there's one thing you can always count on: if a new environmental or safety rule is proposed, executives will prophesy disaster.
When President Obama entered the White House, the economy was in a free-fall. The auto industry: on its back. The banks: frozen up. More than three million Americans had already lost their jobs. And America's bravest, our men and women in uniform, were fighting what would soon be the longest wars in our history.
The hundreds of thousands of men and women at Toyota operations worldwide - including the 172,000 team members and dealers in North America - are among the best in the auto industry.
We hear a lot about rebuilding Detroit, and we just spent $70 billion to bail out the auto industry - well, they need to be cost competitive, too. If they have high-cost energy, those suppliers are going to move to Japan or Mexico instead of Michigan and Tennessee.
What I've said repeatedly is, 'I think the auto industry is a very important industry.'